USA statement at WIPO Extraordinary General Assembly, wants later “final review” of negotiating text, treaty status uncertain
Right before noon at the December 17, 2012 Extraordinary General Assembly, the US read the statement below. Here are a couple of quick comments.
1. The US Statement supports a diplomatic conference, but aligns itself with the EU, calling for a later “final review” of “many outstanding issues,” so only a tentative decision would be made now, and if the EU or USA is not satisfied with concessions from developing countries, they want to be able to revoke the approval for the meeting.
Yesterday I received a Samsung laptop computer running Google’s Chrome OS. This is the new $249 Chromebook with an SSD drive, 2 gigs of RAM, an 11.6 inch 1366 x 768 pixels screen, and the 1.7 GHz Exynos 5200 processor. The laptop weights 2.4 pounds and has a nice usable keyboard and a well implemented trackpad. There is also the option of a model with 2 years of 3G (limited) data from Verizon, for just $329. 
Some have written to ask what the Canada position is on the proposed WIPO treaty on copyright exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities. For the first 3.5 days of the meeting, Canada did not say anything. 
The SCCR has seems to have finished its work on the text for a possible treaty on copyright exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities, and earlier than expected. The new text distributed to delegates is 25 pages long (attached below), and includes several articles with no brackets. There are many differences to be resolved. The question is, will WIPO proceed with a diplomatic conference in 2013?